Weight Loss Diet Burnout

Normally when you are interested in a field of study-relating to an aspect of the human condition-you are drawn to study those who exhibit said state or condition.

Whether you're a sociopath or someone with zero interpersonal skills makes no odds. This has nothing to do being nice, it's to do with your interest and desire for mastery of your chosen field. In other words, that focus that draw is intellectual, whether you're nice and caring and want to help/heal/cure/assist/treat or simply pit your wits against some tangle of human biological function.

What's been singularly remarkable about 'obesity' in the last 4 or so decades is the palpable lack of intellectual drive for most declaring themselves involved in research. In its place is a sort of reflexive defense of the calories in/out ideology.

One omission that epitomizes this void is the absence of weight loss diet burnout from discussing long-term calorie restriction dieting intentions. Let me say this right now if you diet or attempt to "for life" i.e. indefinitely-weight loss diet burnout is inevitable.

Yet, so ignored is this phenomenon, that it doesn't-to my knowledge-have a medical name. It's possible that this is widely known about, but I've never heard it referenced by those seeking to impose the calorie restriction straight-jacket.

Perhaps this is because the insistence is, fat people don't diet which is why we are fat. As dieting is "obesity prevention,"there's nowhere else you can go with a refusal to accept the reality of its failure. The idea of observing fat people objectively, is a waste of time to ideologues.

The best description I ever heard of weight loss diet burnout was "It's like having a nervous breakdown, but solely in this area". "This" being the part of you that deals with seeing off weight loss dieting becomes exhausted by a continual state of emergency/war of attrition with your body. 

Though I knew of it, it caught me unawares when it happened to me because I did not see myself as a dieter. I saw myself as a healthy (/ist) eater. You know, what they recommend now. If you have the perfect diet, you'll become healthier and means you'll lose weight. Healthy=weight loss.

Or to put it more directly-though I didn't realize this at the time. One consumes health.

What happens is one day you go to do your usual-go on a diet that is-and BAM! Some part of you screams NOOOO!!!! It's specifically your nervous system letting you know that its overloaded.

That sensation of something crying out for mercy is hard to get a sense of, unless you've experienced it.

The terms we pin to any cloud of sensory data swirling around our nervous system/s goes according to cultural expression. If this seems a bit weird, I can't fault you, but that's the best way I can explain it.

And the experience itself is like walking oblivious along a familiar street, turning a corner on auto-pilot only to be abruptly shaken out of your reverie by walking straight into some obstacle or person.

Barely a peep will you here about this from official weight loss diet wallahs because, they pretend believe fat people cannot have spent any real time in pursuit of weight loss dieting triumph. 

Merely having the prospect of dieting hanging over your body, is enough to produce some serious symptoms. Yes, our body's response to dieting  can be that potent. And people don't realise this. I'll give you a scenario.

If you decide to go on a diet tomorrow-hyperphagia will kick in between now and then. Your hunger and/or appetite will open up and you'll be stopping past the point you normally do. Iow, like when you manage to miss getting off at your usual station.

Ditto if you decide to start this time next week. This is your body starting its process of weight conservation. If you are one of those people who finds it almost impossible to stick with a diet for any length, i.e. days, even hours, then this, more than weight loss dieting may end up thwarting your body's ability to stablize its weight.

Because you repeat the process week after week, day after day even. Think about that, string together a hyperphagic response week after week, day after day and what can you get? That's right, permanent hyperphagia. In other words, your body's ability to switch off this response off 'breaks.' You're never not about to diet, so it doesn't get a chance to return to normal.

How many people this applies to I don't know. Not simply fat people. People who started dieting whilst slim/remain slim may develop hyperphagic disorder through this. Some of whom didn't particularly succumb to rebound i.e. their rebound didn't go past their starting point.

Dieting is proto-anorexia. It is a pathology, it is self abuse-whether fatness is "healthy or unhealthy" or whether its desirable or not desirable to lose weight is another point entirely.  I'm commenting purely on dieting, it is bad news.

The problem with it is that our bodies, in the shape especially of our nervous system is designed to thwart this. It's this continual invoking of these defences that finally overcomes and exhausts the nervous system-that is weight loss diet burnout.

How do you recover? The same way as you would with a more full nervous breakdown, rest your nervous system. In this specific case-stop dieting and the prospect of it, completely. That rests the areas of the nervous structure involved.

But for most people, the only thing that makes them get back on the diet treadmill after that is either a strong attachment to their identity as slim/thin or despair at aggressive continued gain that shows no sign of stopping.

Otherwise burnout is often a (diet) career ender.